I am also one of the residents of West River Valley Senior Housing, and all I can say to this letter is, “Amen.”
After the fire, I went to Pine Heights in Brattleboro, and was treated exactly the same as the writer described. The staff members there were wonderful, and I will never forget all the employees there whom I now consider my friends.
Thank you, Pine Heights.
...College news • Emma Harris of Brattleboro has enrolled as a member of the Class of 2019 at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H. Harris is a sociology major. • Samuel Porter of Putney has enrolled at Champlain College in Burlington for the fall 2015 semester. He is a...
Fire safety agreement rescinded ROCKINGHAM - Municipal manager Willis “Chip” Stearns III notified the Selectboard that he had received a notice from the Division of Fire Safety that the agreement between them and the Bellows Falls Village has been rescinded because of former Chief William Weston's retirement in August.
It's that time of year again! A few yellow and red leaves are starting to come out, the air in the morning feels a bit cooler, and river swimming is squeezed in before it is too late; summer is slowly fading into fall, and students and teachers have returned to school for another year. Schools are not only places where students are taught to think critically and gain necessary skills for the future. There, young people can face a slew...
The River Valley Kids Fair is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 19 on the Town Common from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. The first of several professional children's acts will be children's entertainers Vicki and Sticks, the husband-and-wife team of Vicki and Rick Ethier, who have performed their interactive family/music show throughout New England. The show, appropriate for all ages, encourages the children to be part of the band. Vicki and Sticks is scheduled to appear at noon. Spaces are available...
For many Americans, Bernie Sanders is a new and different candidate - one marked by honesty, a commitment to justice for all, an unwillingness to campaign negatively or accept corporate money, and a fundamental belief in the possibilities of government to be a force for good. The mainstream narrative about Bernie is that, while he is attracting huge crowds all around the country, larger than the media star Donald Trump, he can't win the nomination because everyone knows Hillary Clinton...
Once again, in Vermont's leaf-color season, past members of the New England Bach Festival Orchestra will join the Blanche Moyse Chorale under the direction of Mary Westbrook-Geha to honor the memory of their mentor, Blanche Moyse, with a presentation of music of her beloved J. S. Bach. This year's concert program will be his renowned choral masterpiece, the St. John Passion, featuring: Carol Wincenc, flute; Stephen Taylor and Mark Hill, oboes; Mitsuru Tsubota, concert mistress; Daire FitzGerald, cello; and John...
The Selectboard wrapped up its final public discussion about the parcel of land Nat Hendricks donated to the town early this year. At the Aug. 26 regular meeting, Board Chair Steve Hed and Board Member Josh Laughlin assured the public there will be more opportunities for them to weigh in on uses of the land. Town officials, including some board members and Town Manager Cynthia Stoddard, said they had contacted the Forest and Cemetery committees to gauge their interest in...
The Connecticut River Watershed Council's (CRWC) 19th annual Source to Sea Cleanup on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 25 and 26, will focus on cleaning up trash tires along the Connecticut River and its tributaries from First Connecticut Lake in northern New Hampshire to Long Island Sound in Connecticut. All sorts of trash gets found during the clean-up, but tires are becoming a big problem. Last year, Source to Sea Cleanup volunteers reported collecting at least 745 tires. CRWC will be...
People living in Windham County who are disgusted with the news they hear coming from their TV can stop yelling at the screen. Even if you aren't exactly yelling at the TV but still are wondering what this world is coming to, there is some good news. You can do something about your distress right here and right now in Windham County, and join with other like-minded voters to help the Republican Party organize your town's GOP Committee to help...
Friends of Brooks present evening of Cuban culture, cuisine BRATTLEBORO - Author, educator, and chef John Verlinden will speak in the Brooks Library Meeting Room on Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 7 p.m., about his new book, To Cook is To Love: Nuevo Cuban: Lighter, Healthier Latin Recipes. Admission is free and the event is sponsored by the Friends of Brooks Memorial Library. This work is a multigenerational cultural tapestry of Cuban history, life, food, wine, and music. Verlinden will prepare...
Guilford adopts hazard mitigation plan GUILFORD - At the Aug. 24 regular Selectboard meeting, board members adopted the town's Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP). The vote was unanimous, minus the absent Gabrielle Ciufredda. The plan analyzes damages from past natural disasters, develops strategies for mitigating those that may occur, and delineates who is responsible for what during potential future events. The LHMP is meant to provide long-term risk-reduction and increase community resiliency. Towns need to adopt a LHMP to receive...
A 498 kilowatt solar installation soon will occupy a Jamaica property formerly used for lumber and construction operations. Cement Plant Solar LLC has received a certificate of public good from the Vermont Public Service Board to build the group net-metered solar array off Route 100 in Jamaica. Cement Plant Solar is a local business name taken by Essex Capital Partners, a Massachusetts company that has been a significant player in the growth of Vermont's solar-power output. Charlie Grant, who is...
Windham World Affairs Council will present Dr. Geoff Dolman, who will speak on the topic “Can wealthy countries help poor countries and improve regional peace?” on Friday Sept. 18, at 7:30 p.m., at the Marlboro College Graduate Center, 28 Vernon St. Coffee, tea, and conversation will precede Dolman's talk at 7 p.m., and a question and answer period will follow his presentation. Dolman will reflect on the experience he has gained in the various countries where he has worked, including...
Brattleboro Police have identified a suspect in a cold case involving a 2011 fire at Entergy headquarters on Old Ferry Road. Investigators ruled the Sept. 20, 2011 fire suspicious after a preliminary investigation. According to Det. Lt. Michael Carrier of the Brattleboro Police Department, the case has been categorized as cold, but it remained active. On Sept. 8, light was shed on the mystery when the department received a call with new information, wrote Carrier in a Sept. 11 press...
Under the direction of Susan Dedell, the Brattleboro Concert Choir performs an inspiring and challenging repertoire, ranging from classic choral masterpieces to contemporary works. The choir presents concerts twice a year. Interested new singers are encouraged to contact Dedell through the Brattleboro Music Center at 802-257-4523 or [email protected]. Rehearsals begin Sept. 16 in Brattleboro. This year's programs begin with music by Morten Lauridsen and John Tavener, as well as young composer, Ola Gjeilo. Lauridsen composed Lux Aeterna, performed by the...
Facing the four overseers of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during a Sept. 9 hearing, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch saw an opportunity to ask about Vermont Yankee. His two primary questions: Can the NRC allow more state and local input on nuclear-plant decommissioning? And can the federal government hasten the decades-long cleanup at VY? The NRC's answers were, respectively, “maybe,” and “no.” In the most telling exchange between commission Chairman Stephen Burns and Vermont's sole representative in the House, Burns said...
Political parties hold town caucuses to elect a political party's Town Committee for the coming election year. Any registered voter who has not participated in the caucus process of another political party is eligible to attend. Republican • Brattleboro, Sept. 23, 7 p.m., Brattleboro Savings & Loan Community Room, 221 Main St. • Rockingham, Sept. 17, 6:30 p.m., Town Hall, The Square, Bellows Falls. • Vernon, Sept. 23, 6 p.m., 54 Homestead Way. • Westminster, Sept. 17, 6 p.m., at...
Join the Brooks Memorial Library and the Brattleboro Camera Club for an evening with Chris Szwedo, the director of the film Eye on the 60s: The Iconic Photography of Rowland Scherman, in the library's meeting room on Wednesday, Sept. 23, at 7 p.m. Eye is an inter-disciplinary, stratified story about a passionate photographer - Rowland Scherman of Life magazine, who followed his path to remarkable people and events in the 1960s - from the inception of the Peace Corps and...
The Open Music Collaborative presents the Melissa Shetler Quartet, with special guest John Stowell, on Friday Sept. 18, at 7 p.m., at the Hooker-Dunham Theater. A chance meeting brings together Shetler and Stowell, with Jamie MacDonald on bass and Claire Arenius on drums. The music will be rooted in the Great American Songbook, with possible surprises. Shetler grew up surrounded by music: hearing her father play along with Lester Young, singing “Walking On Sunshine” with her mother's rock band, listening...
In his letter, Darren Tessitore complains about the Brattleboro Retreat stealing “our hard-earned tax dollars.” I have heard quite a few of these references to “hard- earned tax dollars” in recent years, mainly from the affluent Republican Wall Street crowd, such as investment bankers, hedge fund managers, and their ilk. They constantly complain about any public expenditures to improve the nation's social services, but they applaud and encourage almost unlimited public expenditure on disastrous wars overseas. Many of us will...
For more than 40 years, Vernon and Vermont Yankee have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship. The town has been home to many employees, has educated their children, and has provided excellent highway and public safety services. Employees have been generous with volunteering their time and making donations to various causes and, of course, the plant has been the largest taxpayer in town. Both Vermont Yankee and Vernon wish this strong relationship to continue during the plant decommissioning phase. I am...
Grassroots Artist Management will host its first-ever Brattleblues Showcase at the Hooker-Dunham Theater, 139 Main St., from 7 to 10 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. The event will feature popular local acts Fletcher & Manzi and Sunny Lowdown, as well as a popular act from central New York, Cosby Gibson and Tom Staudle as openers. This showcase is an all-ages show, and is an opportunity to celebrate both local and regional artists.
Brattleboro has been fortunate to have Jerry Carbone, a leader and gentleman, at the helm of its library. Now for his golf game: perhaps a little more time devoted to the game will pick things up a bit.
I'm not sure what communities in this area have an easier time recruiting new people for fire departments or retaining them. Most departments that I talk to - both in the area and out of the area - have the same issue as Putney.
Town loses dog catcher PUTNEY - After barely four months of employment as the town's animal control officer, Amy Davis tendered her resignation to the Selectboard. Thus, the town again seeks to fill the position. At the Aug. 12 Selectboard meeting, Town Manager Cynthia Stoddard announced Davis's departure. Stoddard told the board she had reached out to officials in surrounding towns to ask if they wanted to share an animal control officer. She found “not a lot of interest,” she...
I have long thought that public broadcasting is addicted to corporate feeding troughs. Since the widow of McDonald's left an ungodly amount of money to NPR, it seems that money has come at the cost of public radio serving the full public good. Though public television does costume drama and mystery well, big oil has underwritten it for a couple of decades. Save for Bill Moyers, long gone from the public TV schedule, there is little to no representation of...
In a free talk to be held on Thursday, Sept. 24, at 7 p.m. at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC), Drs. Daniel and Eugene Friedman, co-authors of The Strange Case of Dr. Doyle: A Journey Into Madness and Mayhem (Square One Publishers, 2015), discuss their new book and their theory that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, renowned creator of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, was the notorious serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. In the spring of 1905, members...
The three lawmakers (one a gubernatorial hopeful) stood in the Flood Brook Union School on Monday night before a full house of taxpayers, educators, and parents. The evening's topic and everyone's favorite frustration: education tax and reform. The three state representatives braced for an angry crowd. What Shap Smith, Dave Sharpe, and Oliver Olsen got were a lot of questions. The main question was a perennial: How much local control do communities really have over their school budgets? The lawmakers'
Municipal manager Willis “Chip” Stearns III told village trustees last week that ground water was leaking into the two new buildings constructed during the Phase I upgrades at the water plant. Stearns asked the trustees to grant him authority to award a bid before winter to install drainage and correct the seepage. The trustees unanimously approved. Stearns said the cost of repairs will be funded by the RF3-308 (Water) bond. In January 2014, the Water System Improvements (SRF Loan No.
In 2013, ultra-marathoner Nikki Kimball took on the 273-mile Long Trail in Vermont. The quest was simple: Run the fastest. Send a message: Women are equal in professional sports. On three evenings in October, Rutland-area native and award winning athlete Kimball will bring her message to audiences in three cities around Vermont. Girls on the Run Vermont, the statewide program empowering young girls to develop physical, social and emotional well-being, is hosting Finding Traction, the story of Kimball's groundbreaking journey...
The road less traveled - a reference to Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken - served as a theme that accompanied Kevin F.F. Quigley as he took the helm this past weekend as the ninth president of Marlboro College. Over three days, the college celebrated the inauguration of Quigley, who took over from Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, the college's president for 11 years. The inauguration weekend kicked off Sept. 11 with an afternoon of service, with approximately 80 students and staff...
The Vermont Jazz Center is kicking off its new season of concerts by presenting a three-night Fall Festival from Sept. 18 through 20. All events will take place at the Vermont Jazz Center, 72 Cotton Mill Hill. On Friday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m., the VJC presents renowned flutist, Jamie Baum and her Septet. They will be performing Indian and Pakistani-influenced music filtered through Baum's jazz aesthetic. On Saturday, the 19th, Steve Wilson - claimed by NPR to be “one...
Take one look at the pale-green wall covered with white gauges in the Vermont Yankee control room, and it's clear that the panel hasn't changed much since the nuclear plant began operating in the early 1970s. But there is something new: Blue signs carrying the word “abandoned” dot the wall, indicators of portions of the plant that are no longer active since Yankee shut down on Dec. 29, 2014. “Those lights are out,” said Zander Albert, a control room shift...
The learning curve has been steep for the Brattleboro Colonels football team this season, especially with a schedule that started out with three tough opponents - Hartford, St. Johnsbury, and Middlebury. And, as for what we've seen so far, we saw a Colonels team that played a strong first half at home against Hartford, but couldn't keep up in the second half. We saw them play a wild overtime game at St. Johnsbury where the last team that touched the...
In the last few decades, Peggy Farabaugh noticed a distinct decline in the monarch butterfly population. After learning why, she decided to do something about it. During the first week of September, the back deck of Vermont Woods Studios, the Vernon business she owns with her husband, Ken, became a sort of caterpillar hatchery. “We have 15 cocoons in mesh hampers, and some on the milkweed plants in the field” behind the building, she said. The pupae should hatch into...
About four years ago, in search of lower costs, Turning Point of Windham County moved from downtown. Just one year later, administrators of the addiction-recovery center began plotting their return. The problem, Executive Director Suzie Walker recalled, was that “the people who needed us most couldn't get to us.” The return to downtown worked even more quickly than anyone had imagined, as the number of Turning Point guests and meeting attendees jumped from 661 in June 2014 to 1,257 in...
In 1994, at the Women's Crisis Center in Brattleboro, we were very careful about how we spoke. We did not speak on behalf of battered women, for that would be to rob them of their voices. Nor did we call them “battered women,” for that imposed an identity of powerlessness. Nor did we call them “clients,” for that assumed that we had some authority and expertise, as if we were Social Workers. We fretted over language because we didn't want...
Growing up in Central Indiana, Dale Barnett was a middling high school student and a middling athlete. But in the summer of 1969, he got the chance to attend Boys State, the American Legion's participatory educational program that teaches high schoolers about the process of government at the state, local, and federal levels. “The Legion changed my life,” he told a gathering at Brattleboro American Legion 5 on Sunday morning. “That's the only way I got into the U.S. Military...
Vermont's newest poet laureate, Chard deNiord, writes lyrical poems about what he calls “immense particulars.” “I concentrate on details that become large and important,” deNiord says. His subjects can be the seemingly plain things in life, like close friends lost, marriage, and farm life in Vermont (which he learned about when teaching at the Putney School, which has a farm on its campus). But he transforms the mundane and familiar through poetry, as can be seen in the first half...
“I'm Bill Paterson and nobody tells me what to do!” Kevin W. Titus yelled these words last Saturday afternoon across Route 5, in the general direction of the Town Hall. Titus was playing the part of Tory High Sheriff William Paterson, under whose command it is argued the first blood was shed in the American Revolution. The Westminster Town Hall was playing the part of the Westminster Courthouse. A handful of locals joined Titus and his Connecticut-based group, the Determined...
During winter's cold spells, NewBrook Elementary School's outdated heating system had a hard time keeping up: Some classrooms were stiflingly warm, while others remained chilly. And the boiler that fueled that system was alarmingly inefficient, gulping about three gallons of oil each hour. All that is about to change, as NewBrook is in the process of installing a sophisticated new air-to-air heat pump system for heating and cooling. The system, along with a new backup propane-fueled boiler, has eliminated the...
“We're closing the White Elephant sale in 10 minutes,” the volunteer said, her voice booming into the Old Town Hall. It was just about 10:15 on Saturday morning, and the rummage sale - part of the day's Westminster West Community Fair - had been open only for about an hour. Why so soon, a shopper wondered to herself. The message must have gotten through. “The White Elephant sale will close just for the parade,” the volunteer's voice echoed through the...
More than a decade ago, I was riding along the Havana Malecén in a white and blue '57 Ford with a four-cylinder Toyota engine. The taxi driver overheard my companions speaking English in the back seat. “Where you from?” he asked in Spanish. “Estados Unidos,” I replied. “I thought so. The way they were talking, I thought I was in a film.” We drove on in silence, the Ford creeping along the broad seaside avenue, the red sun dyeing the...
Next Stage Arts Project is in the midst of a $1.5 million renovation project, transforming the former United Church of Putney into a modern, fully-accessible performing arts center. The renovations got a boost last week when the nonprofit was selected as one of 27 projects around Vermont to receive Downtown and Village Tax Center tax credits amounting to nearly $24,000. The tax credits, administered by the state's Downtown Program, targets state funding to support efficient use of land and resources...